Family and Early Life

I'm the youngest of the six children of James Clarke and Catherine Fallon.  My family tree has branches hundred-year-old oaks can just dream about... 

I grew up at 473 43rd Street in Brooklyn NY a few feet down from 5th Avenue and Sunset Park, and later at a house just down the street, 441 43rd St. 

They tell me I was something of a precocious child.  My father taught me to read when I was four, so by the time I started at St. Michael's School (at the corner of 4th Avenue and 43rd) I could read at the top of my class -- and regularly got into trouble because of it. 

I was a voracious reader, tearing through Tom Swift, The Hardy Boys, and Jerry Todd (among others).  From a very early age, I have wanted to become a writer of fiction.  (I have three story-lines 'finished' and a fourth in process.) 

I did so well academically in grade school that I was able with little or no effort to get my pick of the best high schools in the city.  I wound up at St. Augustine DHS because it was close and free.  My parents weren't what you would call "well off"...  my father worked two jobs for as long as I can remember and died when I was 13 of his second heart attack.  If you want to see what my father looked like in his later years, look at the picture at the top of this page.

Even though I didn't sparkle in high school, my SAT's were good enough to get me into Manhattan College, in Riverdale at the northern tip of Manhattan Island.  I lasted one year.  Really, I lasted one semester; they kept me around because they couldn't believe grades that low could come from someone who got a 695 on the Physics SAT.  At the end of the next semester, they realized that it was, indeed, possible and expelled me.  In retrospect, I think that being too bright in grade school enabled me to slide along without ever doing any studying.  Since I never learned how to study, my high school grades were something less than remarkable; savvy got me good SAT marks, but being unable to study effectively dooms a college career. 

After two years clerking for an insurance company and American Express in downtown Manhattan I enrolled at Pace College and started learning accounting...  if "learning" is actually the right word.  By 1967 I was about to graduate and started with IBM in their Eastern Region Accounting Department, basically as a glorified clerk (there are only seven or eight true accountants at IBM and they all work in Armonk).  See "career" below.  In December, finally able (by virtue of being permanently employed) to support a family, Norene Mary Lydon married me. 

In July 1971 we moved from our last apartment, 150 Stephenson Blvd in New Rochelle NY to our first house, 1668 Central St in Yorktown Heights NY.  In 1971 Norene delivered the twins, Ann-Marie and Siobhan, on December 14th at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn.  In July 1976 we moved from Central St to 1 Allen Rd in Brookfield CT.  This was later renumbered to 11 Prange Rd.  On May 6th 1977 Jessica was born at Danbury (CT) Hospital.  In September 1981 we moved to 3919 Hidden Glen Dr in Kingwood TX after I was hired by Aramco Services Company in Houston. 

Now we're grandparents: Jessica Frances presented us with Kylen Francis Clarke November 16th, 1994; Ann-Marie delivered Reagan Elizabeth Brown July 19th, 2000; Siobhan Eileen presented us with Nicholas Evan Hull on March 4th, 2002.  Ann-Marie added Micah Andrew Brown August 19th, 2004.

Career

Five of us from FE General Accounting took him up on the offer: Don McGill, Fred O'Mara, Fred DaBenigno, Al D'Angelo, and me.  (I think Dave Fisher said "I'll give you these four if you also take Frank" -- even then I was hard-to-manage...)  We all knew it was a one-way trip: succeed or you're gone.  Surprisingly, we all made it.  Our training regimen consisted of a tutorial in the morning presented by one of Ray's old-hands (Bob Reim, Pat Mitchell, Bob Buhlmann, Rich Demers, and others) followed by hands-on tasks in the afternoon.  In six months we were battle-hardened Code Rangers, Software Special Forces...  look out!  

In 1979, I had just finished work on the Suggestions Tracking and Statistical System, FE's very first IMS DB/DC application, and was trying to get it installed.  The production crew at Sterling Forest were stonewalling all my efforts.  I was getting no help from management and Dave Boyd, the analyst on the project, was off on another one -- this one being "finished" from an analysis standpoint.  In June I was given a 6% raise.  (To put this in perspective, 1979 was the end of the Carter administration and inflation was galloping along between 17% and 19% per year; a 6% raise was a radical pay-cut.)  To make things worse, the promotion I expected for completing this flagship project didn't appear. 

It turned out that STSS had been mandated to FE by Corporate and everyone in FE management wanted it to fail so they wouldn't be stuck with maintaining it.  Silly me...  I made it work;  they should have told me...  Sterling Forest was told to kill this project at any cost, so they nickel-and-dime'd me to death on the installation documentation hoping I would just give up on it.  (Dave would later get a Grand Tour of Europe out of the "Suggestions Project" when Corporate HQ mandated its use at all Suggestions Departments -- including all the European plant sites.  If I had still been working at IBM, it's a fair bet that task would have fallen to me or to both of us.  It would be another 17 years before I got to visit Europe.)

The straw that broke the camel's back: that year IBM opened the Tampa Application Development Center.  Everyone from White Plains (a high-cost-of-living area) wanted to go to Tampa (average cost of living).  Instead, the site was seeded with people from Mechanicsburg PA, a low-cost-of-living area.  They got hurt when they had to sell their $25,000 homes and buy $50,000 homes; we got hurt because we got to keep our $75,000 homes. 

I put my resume out on the street.  In two weeks I had a job lined up and I resigned from IBM.  I contracted with Automated Concepts, Inc out of Stamford CT at IT&T in Stratford CT and at American Can in Greenwich.  Since I was now both living and working in Connecticut (which had no income tax) I got an automatic boost in the net-pay box.  Between my higher salary and the lower taxes, my net increased 40%.  Five months later I was looking for another job and moved to Fawcett Publications (Div. of CBS) in Greenwich.  Fifteen months later I was on my way to Houston to work for Aramco Services Company (ASC), an arm of the Arabian-American Oil Company.  Houston was riding on this huge bubble of oil...

In 1984 things were looking very glum in Houston.  ASC, whose job was primarily to find warm bodies to work in The Great Sandbox was effectively without a mission, and people were being laid off left and right.  I put my resume back out onto the streets and it was picked up by...  IBM Tampa!   They flew me in for an interview, made me an offer I couldn't refuse, and I rejoined IBM in December 1984.  Why couldn't I refuse?  The job at Aramco was about to evaporate, I got the transfer to Tampa I wanted in 1979, got the promotion I expected in 1979, got credit for the 12+ years from '67 to '79, became (because of that) instantly eligible for 3 weeks' vacation, and my Tampa salary was approximately double what I was making in White Plains five years prior. 

Fast-forward to 1991:  IBM's profits are soft, and Wall Street is saying the company is over-populated.  IBM makes an offer to its employees:  leave, get a week's pay for each 6-months of service, keep your benefits, and if you could have retired before 12/31/2000, you can still retire on the same date if you're still alive.  They wanted 14,000 people to take "the package"; 41,000 did.  I was one of them. 

Semi-retired, I picked up a contract with GTEDS and worked it off-and-on until 1998, grabbed another contract with EXXON in Houston, another with Philip Morris in Richmond through Y2K, and finally signed on (perm) with Nielsen Media Research here in Florida in 2001.  I expect to retire again around 2010 or so (when Norene is also ready to retire) and that time it will be for real.  After retirement, we're hoping to be able to spend considerable time in France.   Paris is our favorite city, and the Haute-Savoie our favorite region.  

Life is good.